Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Back Escape Madness

18 days until the Arnolds

It was a smaller then usual Thursday class, there were maybe 15 guys that showed up. The first 45 mins was devoted to Clints Killa Cardio. It was actually somewhat reasonable tonight, although still a great workout. We mixed in sprints and partner drills with lots and lots of lemon garlic shrimping.

I went with the regular class tonight and Clint decided it was back escape day. He asked the peanut gallery of white and blue belts the proper way to escape the back that Clint teaches. After several somewhat correct (but incomplete) answers, Clint broke down his awesome back escape.

The main detail everyone missed was the first and most important thing when being back mounted. This is to protect your neck with both hands immediately. Keep the elbows in and block both sides of your neck with your hands. You can then work the escape by scooting your butt down the floor, which with your elbow will cause one of the opponents hooks to be forced out. You then literally keep scooting until you are lying on the floor. Pin the enemies leg to the ground and turn over staying TIGHT.

We then got a little bit of practice in this position. Cough Cough. We went in groups of 3. The first guy (me in our group) got to be backmounted by one of the guys for 30 seconds. The goal was to go hard for 30 seconds and escape with full resistance. Immediately afterwords, the fresh partner would jump in and start a new 30 second set with the same guy trying to escape. Each guy had to do 15 minutes (30 sets) in a row of escaping. If you failed to escape you had to do 5 pushups each time, which switched to 10 crunches towards the end of the drill. Each guy took his turn in the hotseat and this was a brutal but effective drill!

We finished class by doing......................SPRINTS! Big Dawg switched it up a little this time though. We first had to do 2 laps (there and back, there and back) acrossed the length of the mats. This was timed and we had 36 seconds. If ANYONE on the team didn't make it, we would have to re-do the sprint. Everyone made it with like 12 or 13 seconds to go.

The next round we had to do the same thing but had to do 3 laps (there and back x 3) in the same 36 second time. This was a struggle, but you could see everyone sprinting with all their might trying not to be the one guy not to make it. The whole team again made it with a couple seconds left.

We did one last round of 3 laps and that was the end. Clint said he'd stay a while if we wanted to live roll, but everyone was busy wheezing from these sprints still so we packed up and called it a night.